Buy another car

Summary:
I read a lot of the reviews for this generation RX-7 and am quite perplexed. I absolutely recommend that you NEVER own one of these cars unless you are an adept mechanic AND have deep pockets. It is quite a shame saying this, too, as the car when runnin is phenomenal. My wife and I bought ours from the original owner (a woman who wouldn't even drive it in the rain!) with 36,000 miles on it in, I think, 1996. It was a completely mint, unmolested, never wrecked automatic transmission car. Thank goodness it had an extended warranty. Within 3 months of buying it, I got my first clue something was wrong when it died in rush hour traffic with the AC on. To make a long story short, this was only the beginning; it finally got so bad that hitting the brakes coming up to a stop light made the car die! I had begun researching on the net, and came across the scariest site ever (I don't know if it is still up or not) - the RX-7 Lemon site. I quickly learned that the third-gen RX-7 is a true lemon! The rotary engine seals are inherently flawed and the car should have been recalled. I finally managed to get Jay Marks Mazda here in Houston to run a compression test - to my shock (I knew what was wrong at this point) they said it was fine and that it just had an oil leak - it drank oil (and yes way more than normal rotary usage). I took it to Jeff Haas Mazda, another dealer here in Houston, who was astonished upon inspection that we could even drive it! One rotar had NO compression at all and the other barely enough to run the car. They replaced the engine and both turbos (also shot) under warranty - $7000. They also fought with Mazda North America for weeks to get them to cover it! A Mazda factory extended warranty is NOT worth owning. They have a horrible rep for paying dealers for repairs and do not compensate at anywhere near normal rates, thus dealers are resistant to doing warrantied repairs. If for any reason you doubt my horror story, please do your own research - just check the used ads on Traderonline - at least 50% of ads will mention that the car has a new engine. This is not normal people!

Sadly, I do miss it; it is a beautiful and fast car. I sold mine immediately upon repair while still under warranty with full disclosure to the buyers. I couldn't have slept at night selling that car to anyone if it hadn't still had a considerable warranty on it and a brand new engine and turbos.

Strengths:
Awesome handling - better than the NSX that I own now, in my opinion. Beautiful design - especially the double-bubble roof and sweeping door cuts. Very fast - great turbo rush.

Weaknesses:
Inherent design flaws to the engine clearly classify this car as a 'lemon'.
Bose acoustimass stereo sound quality is fairly dismal (all Bose seems to be...)